I hope I didn't break any rules but I gathered some replies off of Paizo's message boards and thought to give people a heads up as to some ideas for what to expect when Bestiary 2 comes out for Pathfinder. I posted this on
my yahoo group but yahoo allows you to paste in all of the icons as well as quotes and seperators. This will probably be difficult to determine who wrote what.

Allen Stewart wrote:
At the risk of sounding like I'm giving a shameless plug; the current Pathfinder bestiary is the best monster book, bar none, that I have seen since the 1st edition d&d monster books.
Though I would like to see another bestiary, I for one, am not desirous to see endless streams of new, stupid monsters enter the game. WoTC made a common practice of that during 3.5's count 'em FIVE monster books. If Paizo sticks to the model that the current bestiary has pioneered, then they'll have a great product on their hands.
It is my hope that any future monster book will contain the longstanding monsters from the d&d game that didn't make it into the first bestiary (which spactactularly had a good percentage of them).

The tentative plans for now ARE To do a monster book each year. At least until they stop selling. But that said, all of Paizo's Bestiaries are going to follow a similar design philosophy to the bestairies we include in the back of every Pathfinder Adventure Path volume. That is... we'll be relying VERY heavilly on real world resources like mythology, cryptozoology, legend, and the public domain. Humanity's been creating monsters for many thousands of years, after all, and that's enough to keep our monster books going for a good long time.

The bad news first: The creature list for Bestiary II is already 98% solidified and the majority of design work is already done. So we know what we've got, but since development hasn't even started, it's really too early to talk about any in any concrete terms.

The good news: with one exception (and even less if you squint your eyes) ever one of your wises are granted.

Feel free to start throwing out ideas for #3, though, those beasties are going to be nipping at our heels in no time!

Presto2112 wrote:
I have a request for stuff NOT to show up. Please do not create Bestiary entries that are just existing monsters with class levels, like a lot of MM IV and V were...

A book of creatures with class levels, or simply a book of NPC humanoids with class levels, is a really good idea. We'll have a LOT of this stuff in the Gamemastery Guide and in the NPC guide. This type of content is NOT appropriate for a Bestairy, and it won't be showing up in our monster books. The closest you'll see it come will be cases like goblins and orcs (creatures without racial HD who HAVE to have a level in a class... and in these cases we'll never have more than one level on that creature) and templates (like the lich, ghost, and vampire, in which case we'll use the class that most closely fits the standard archetype of the monster template in question).

Darrin Drader wrote:
I have to agree with this, though I did like the 3.5 MM that had the basic versions of the monsters and then some of them had beefed up versions alongside them.

We won't be doing that either; I'd rather fill higher CR slots with new monsters.

Folks looking for monsters with class levels, actually, need look no further than our modules and adventure paths. Using those as sources for stat blocks for your home games is a GREAT way to get use out of a module or adventure you don't intend on running, and it's an often-overlooked aspect and value of adventures.

Kevida wrote:
Oh thought of something else:
Para-Elementals, Quasi-Elementals and "Energy" Elementals (Zagyi & Yizag). I second 8th Dwarf's idea if the Mega-Fauna. James I appreciate that your company is also going to concentrate on "real world" mythologies and cryptids. Hopefully you will include "Anthro-Cryptids" (ala Saquatch et al.)

We've already got a LOT of megafauna in the Bestairy. We won't be stopping at the smilodon or the mammoth, though, I guarentee that.

As for various flavors of elementals... we'll probably do a few more, but I don't really want to waste TOO much space on differently-flavored elementals because flavor-wise they're kind of boring. Needless to say the concepts start to creep into non-open content here and there (such as with the xeg-ya and xag-yi).

artisan wrote:
Blink dogs anyone? They're in the 3.5SRD. Any reason they weren't included in the bestiary?

For the blink dog, it came down to, basically, us having to chose between blink dogs, black puddings, and boars. We had to put in boars because they're a load-bearing monster (they show up as animal companions and on summon nature's ally spells and as wildshape options). We wanted to put black puddings in because there's really not a lot of oozes in the book.

Which left blink dogs on the cutting room floor. They'll be in Bestairy 2, though. I think

Not only are ju-ju zombies open content, thanks to the Tome of Horrors, the phrase "juju" is from real world African myth associated with fetishisim and witchcraft, so even if the Tome of Horrors didn't have the ju-ju zombie in it in open game format, we could probably STILL make a Juju zombie.

And I'm pretty sure we will indeed be putting the juju zombie into Bestiary 2, in any event. If only because it makes a perfect companion for the skeletal champion template as a "tougher zombie" variant.

Arch Lich Thoth-Amon

12-08-2009, 07:14 PM

Appreciate the update, WhiteTiger.

Morcant

12-08-2009, 10:42 PM

That sounds great!

I haven't been able to purchase the original Bestiary yet, but from what I've seen when I've thumbed through it, it looks fantastic. Maybe I'll get it for Christmas this year. :D

Swordnboard

12-10-2009, 04:02 PM

Awesome! I just got the first one and I like it very much. It's very easy to read and the data is very presentable. Now I have something to look forward to for next year! I just hope I can afford all the books they will be releasing then: Advanced Players Handbook, GM Guide, Bestiary 2...

Aack why no Titan in the beastiary?
Just not enough room. There's a few dozen monsters that just wouldn't fit. That's what happens when you have thousands of cool monsters and a limited number of pages - you have to make some hard decisions about who stays and who waits. On the upside, we're really striving to make sure that all the MM monsters that didn't make it into Bestiary I make it into the sequel. So don't worry, just because monster X, Y, or Z didn't make it into the Bestiary that doesn't mean that we were like "Monster X, he's LAAAAAME! Kill 'em!", it just means he's on deck for what's next.
And in the Titan's case specifically, rest assured that we have something new and cool in mind, which I promise will be worth the wait!

http://paizo.com/image/logo/golem-tiny.gif James Jacobs (http://paizo.com/people/JamesJacobs) (Editor-in-Chief, Pathfinder), Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 03:02 PM (http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizoPublishing/pathfinder/pathfinderRPG/products/paizo/beastiaryNoTitan&page=1#37)
http://paizo.com/image/avatar/GoL68FiendishTyrannosauru.jpg (http://paizo.com/people/JamesJacobs) Titans will be in Bestiary II, and they'll build upon the themes and ideas from "The Great Beyond." But in a world-neutral way.